The Big Over Easy was Jasper Fforde’s first novel, yet
when it failed to get a release, it was shelved. After the success of his first
four Thursday Next novels, Fforde revisited this novel, extensively re-writing
it to fit in the same (somewhat) alternate universe that his Thursday Next
series.
In this
universe, the public judges its police force by how exciting and glamorous
their cases are, so they can be followed in the (fictional) Amazing Crime
Stories magazine. It is here we tumble into the seedy underbelly of the nursery
crime. Inspector Jack Spratt (who had a cameo in The Well of Lost Plots), is a family man and head of the Nursery Crime
Division, and with funding resources in slim decline, and a bungled case of the
death of The Big Bad Wolf where he tried to have the pigs brought up murder
charges, he’s in need of something big to save his career. He’s assigned investigating
the murder of ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humperdinck Jehoshaphat Aloysius
van Dumpty, AKA Humpty Dumpty, who is found shattered to death beneath a wall
in a shabby area of town.
What to Spratt
and partner DS Mary Mary might first look like a suicide (and more importantly,
his boss wants it to be), turns more sinister as they investigate - money
laundering, deceit and lovers all over the place.
After reading
Fforde’s Thursday Next novels, one
gets the idea that with The Big Over Easy,
these are ideas only he could do. His odd mixture of puns -Officer Gretel Kandelstyk-Maeker
is one of many –and his riffs on typical mystery motifs is enjoyable (as each
chapter begins with articles how albinos are being mistreated as terrorists, or
on the banning of “identical twin” plots and such, or featuring stories about
Miss Maple and Inspector Dogleash). Unlike his Thursday Next books, this book has a more linear plot, but I would
say the reader should peruse the early Thursday Next novels to get a better
understanding of Fforde’s motives.
All in all, a
good mystery that makes fun of mysteries, while also working on our childhood
memories of nursery rhymes.
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